Exercise Rider

The gates are scheduled to open at 9:30 a.m. on Friday. Post time for the first race is 11:35 and the first Breeders' Cup race goes off at 2:45. But long before those bright-eyed Breeders' Cup attendees begin filling the grandstands of Del Mar, the backside will have been awake for hours. For those back in the barns as Breeders' Cup morning dawns, in many ways it's just like any other day. It is the same routine of raking barn aisles, topping off water buckets, checking temps, preparing feed, wrapping...

There are people that work with horses and there are people that love horses. In the case of Katie Tolbert, there is no better example of a person that works with horses because of how much she loves them. You see the devotion on a quiet morning on the backside of Churchill Downs as she sits in the saddle, stroking the neck of the horse she is astride or is ponying alongside her. You hear it in the echo of a nicker from an excited trainee, eager for her company,...

From a young age, Jeramie Fennell was certain that he was born to be a jockey. Addicted to the thrill of riding, becoming a jockey was the only thing he really cared about, the only thing he knew for certain. So when, as he continued growing taller throughout his teenage years and maintaining weight became increasingly difficult, Fennell did what he thought he had to do in order to live out his dream. He turned to a different kind of addiction, but this time the consequences would lead him to...

They say that once horse racing gets in your blood, it never leaves. Lee Vickers has no doubts about that. For him, a passion for the sport was practically embedded into his genetic code. Both his father and his grandfather were jockeys in his native England and Vickers was riding racehorses himself by age 12. Over the past three decades since, Vickers has ridden dozens of top-level horses on both sides of the Atlantic. This year, the assistant trainer and exercise rider for Christophe Clement is enjoying the ride with...

GI Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes contender Arthur's Ride (Tapit) is all business when he goes out to train in the morning. Coming back to the barn afterwards? Well, that's a different story. Damian Hinds has been assigned to Arthur's Ride as the 4-year-old colt's exercise rider throughout this year's Saratoga meet. He has grown accustomed to the GI Whitney winner's daily antics over the Oklahoma track when they start heading back to the Bill Mott barn after training. "He's a good horse to gallop, quiet and nice, but to...

For many people, their passion for racing started with a horse. They watched Zenyatta dance to two Breeders' Cup victories, they had a strong opinion in the rivalry between Affirmed and Alydar or maybe they cheered American Pharoah on to a Grand Slam score when he won the 2015 Classic. For Priscilla Schaefer, her love of racing all started with a backstretch. She was in high school when she attended her first horse race at Emerald Downs outside of Seattle, Washington. Watching as the horses entered the starting gate, Schaefer...

Carlos Rosas is running out of fingers to count on as he rattles off the names of Breeders' Cup champions he has sat on over the years. As an exercise rider for Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen for the past two decades, Rosas has played a role in developing an impressive list of superstars. There's 2014 Distaff winner Untapable and 2011 Juvenile Fillies heroine My Miss Aurelia, plus Breeders' Cup runner-ups Midnight Bisou and Tapiture. The list goes on from there. Curlin was one of his earliest claim to...

by Cathy Riccio and Jennie Rees Joanne McNamara--the first to be dubbed by the turf media as 'Exercise Rider to the Stars' for the long list of champions and world-class horses she rode in morning training--passed away this past Sunday in Ocala, Fla., after a short battle with cancer. She was 67. Working for Hall of Fame trainer MacKenzie Miller and Rokeby Stables in her first racetrack job, she galloped her barn favorite Rokeby Rose, a multiple stakes winner who also became a prominent broodmare, producing Kentucky Oaks winner Silverbulletday....

Alfredo Luevano, 53, died early Friday morning in a training incident at Los Alamitos Race Course in Cypress, California, the track said in a press release late Friday evening. Luevano was exercising a filly on the backstretch when the incident occurred. He was on the ground when assistance first arrived, while the filly ran off under her power. As of now, there have been no eyewitness accounts with any precise details on the incident. Luevano was rushed to Long Beach Memorial, where he was pronounced deceased. The horse, a 2-year-old...

Of all the pinhookers at this year's Keeneland September Sale, DeJuan Smith has definitely taken the most hands-on approach. While some sellers might watch anxiously from the back ring or in a seat in the sales pavilion, Smith will quite literally be on the shank of his own horse as it goes through the sales ring. Smith is a ringman for Keeneland and also a show person for Taylor Made Sales. On Thursday Hip 3452, his first pinhook project, will sell with Taylor Made. Could Smith be the first person...

To help the exercise riders at Gulfstream Park and Palm Meadows comply with HISA regulations, the Florida Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (FTHA) and 1S/T Racing have joined forces to launch the Safety Equipment Voucher Program. The program will provide a $200 voucher toward the purchase of each helmet and a $200 voucher toward the purchase of each vest that is defective or not up to code to offset the cost of replacing equipment. Under HISA regulations, safety equipment is subject to inspection, and all helmets must meet one of the following...

Callie Witt, 20, an exercise rider for trainer Joe Sharp, died Friday morning following a training accident on the Keeneland training track. The incident occurred shortly after 8 a.m. when Witt was thrown from a 2-year-old horse. Alpha Event Medicine, the track's on-site medical team, immediately attended to her life-threatening injuries. Lexington Fire and Emergency arrived at the scene within six minutes and transported Witt to the University of Kentucky Emergency Department, where she was pronounced dead from blunt force injuries. Keeneland Vice President of Equine Safety Dr. Stuart Brown...